Rudolf Hoess - Commandant of Auschwitz

I was certainly there myself, but I was neither the ringleader nor the person chiefly concerned. When I saw, during interrogation, that the comrade who actually did the deed could only be incriminated by my testimony, I took the blame on myself, and he was released while the investigation was still going on. I need not emphasize that, for the reasons given above, I was in complete agreement with the sentence of death being carried out on the traitor. In addition, Schlageter was an old comrade of mine. I had fought beside him in many a bitter scrap in the Baltic and in the Ruhr, and had worked with him behind the enemy lines in Upper Silesia. We had also done a lot of illicit gunrunning together.

I was at the time, and remain to this day, completely convinced that this traitor deserved to be put to death. In all probability no German court would have convicted him, so it was left to us to pass sentence in accordance with an unwritten law which we ourselves, owing to the exigencies of the times, had laid down. [17] Hoess’s description of the Parchim murder is colored in his favor and contains inaccuracies. Evidence given before the court which sat in Leipzig from the 12th to the 15th of March 1924, shows this to have been a particularly brutal murder. It had been decided that a former elementary schoolteacher by the name of Kadow was a Communist spy who had infiltrated the Rossbach organization. Hoess and others—Martin Bormann was indirectly implicated— spent the night of May 31-June 1, 1922, drinking, and then abducted Kadow into the woods, where he was beaten almost to death with clubs and branches, after which his throat was cut and he was finally finished off with two revolver bullets. There is not the slightest scrap of evidence to show that Kadow was in any way connected with the Schlageter affair. However, since Schlage-ter had been condemned to death by the French authorities in the Ruhr only a few days before the Kadow murder, it is possible that Hoess had been confused by remarks that Kadow was a traitor “like the man who betrayed Schlageter to the French.” Nor is there any reason to believe that the man who gave evidence against Hoess and the others sold his story to Vorwärts. He was named Jurisch, and the Court for the Defense of the Republic decided that he told his story, thus implicating himself, because he feared lest he himself be murdered by members of the Rossbach organization for knowing too much.

This can, perhaps, only be fully understood by those who lived, or can imagine themselves living, in the chaotic conditions existing at that time.

During the nine months that I spent awaiting trial, and also during the trial itself, I was far from appreciating the seriousness of my position. I firmly believed that my trial would probably never take place and that even if it did I would certainly be acquitted. The political crisis in the Reich during 1923 was so acute that the overthrow of the government by one side or the other seemed inevitable. I confidently anticipated that in due course we would be set free by our comrades. Hitler’s abortive Putsch on November 9, 1923, should have made me think again. I still pinned my hopes, however, on a favorable turn of events. [18] Hoess was arrested on June 28, 1923. On March 15, 1924, he was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment, six months of this sentence to count as already served.

My two defense lawyers took great pains to point out the gravity of my position and were of the opinion that I must expect at least a lengthy term of imprisonment, if not the death sentence itself, as a result of the new political composition of the tribunal and the more stringent measures that were being inforced against all nationalist organizations. I could not bring myself to believe this. While in prison awaiting trial, we received every possible consideration, for the great majority of us were, politically speaking, from the left, mostly Communists; comparatively few belonged, like myself, to the right. Even Zeigner, the Minister of Justice for Saxony,-sat in his own prison accused of profiteering and of perverting the course of justice. [19] Dr. Erich Zeigner had attempted to set up a Communist government in Saxony, and was deprived of his functions as Prime Minister and Minister of Justice for Saxony by a decree of the President of the Reich dated October 29, 1923. He was later tried on a charge of abuse of public office, specifically for destroying public documents and subverting public funds for political party ends. On March 29, 1924, he was sentenced to three years in prison.

We could write a lot and were allowed to receive both letters and parcels. We could get the newspapers and so were at all times aware of what was happening outside. We were, however, kept strictly isolated from one another, and we were always blindfolded when we were taken from our cells. Contact with our friends was confined to a few, occasional words shouted through the windows.

During the trial we found that the conversations that we were able to have among ourselves during the intervals and during our journeys to and from the court, and the renewed contact with our comrades were far more important and interesting than the trial itself. Even the pronouncement of sentence made little impression on me or my comrades. We left the court in a boisterous mood, shouting and singing our old songs of battle and defiance. Was this just a grim sort of humor? For my part I do not think so. I was simply unable to believe that I would have to serve my sentence.

The bitter awakening came only too soon, after I had been transferred to the prison where I was to begin my term of hard labor.

A new, and up to then unknown, world now opened before me. Serving a sentence in a Prussian prison in those days was no rest cure.

Every aspect of life was strictly regulated down to the smallest details. Discipline was on severe, military lines. The greatest emphasis was placed on the punctilious discharge and most careful execution of the exactly calculated task that was allotted each day. Every offense was severely punished, and the effect of these “house punishments” was increased by the fact that they entailed a refusal of any possible reduction of sentence.

As a political prisoner, found guilty of a “crime of conviction,” I was kept in solitary confinement. At first I was not at all happy about this, for I had just had nine months’ solitary in Leipzig, but later I was only too thankful, in spite of the many small amenities that life in the large communal cells offered. In my cell I had only myself to consider. Once I had completed my allotted task, I could arrange my day as I wished without regard to any fellow prisoner, and I escaped the hideous bullying practiced by the real criminals in the larger cells. I had learned, though at secondhand, a little about such bullying which is directed mercilessly against all who do not belong to the criminal fraternity or who fail to hide their views. Even the strict supervision of a Prussian prison was unable to prevent this terrorism.

At that time I believed I knew all about human nature. I had seen all sorts and types of men of many different nations and classes, and had observed their habits, both the good and even more so the bad. For though I was still young, I had had considerable experience of the world, and had been through a lot.

The criminals who shared my prison made me realize how little I really knew. Even though I lived alone in my cell, I yet came into daily contact with my fellow prisoners during exercise in the courtyard, or on the way to one or another of the prison administration offices, in the washhouses, through contact with the cleaners, or at the barber’s, or with the prisoners who brought or collected the work materials, or in many other ways. Above all, I listened to their talk every evening from my window. From all this I got a fairly good insight into the minds and souls of these people, and an abyss of human aberrations, depravities, and passions was opened before my eyes.